Coaxial cable plants have been widely deployed worldwide, e.g., in the past two to three decades. Although Time Domain Multiplexing (TDM) Passive Optical Networks (PONs) based Fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) architecture are emerging, due to the relatively high cost of such systems, coaxial cable plants are still serving many broadband triple play customers today. The coaxial cable has about 5 Gigabit per second (Gbps) digital bandwidth, which is typically sufficient for broadband access demand. One problem of traditional cable access is that it may not have a satisfactory data access scheme that is sufficient for current or future users demand. For example, a data over cable service interface specification (DOCSIS) standard is used to provide data access in North America and Europe. The DOCSIS standard has an upstream data rate that is limited to about 100 Megabit per second (Mbps), such as in the case of DOCSIS 3.0 with channel bonding which is shared by many (e.g. from about 100 to about 500) cable modems. Due to historic reasons, e.g., to support legacy systems and/or save investment cost in new infrastructure, DOCSIS may still be used as a cable data access scheme in these regions in the foreseeable future. A TDM PON can provide much higher data rates than coaxial cable systems. For example an Ethernet PON (EPON) can provide about 1 Gbps upstream and downstream symmetric bandwidth to about 32 shared customers, and a GPON can support 2.5 Gbps downstream and 1.25 Gbps upstream bandwidth to about 32 shared customers. Thus, the TDM PON is a more attractive data access method for non-DOCSIS regions, such as Asia and China.